The number of obese and overweight children in the world could balloon from 44 million in 2012 to 75 million in 2025, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Friday.

U.S. regulators on Friday warned against ingesting pure powdered caffeine, which is being sold in bulk over the Internet and is known to have killed at least one teenager.

"These products are essentially 100 percent caffeine. A single teaspoon of pure caffeine is roughly equivalent to the amount in 25 cups of coffee," the Food and Drug Administration said.

A human egg used to produce stem cells but unable to develop into a viable embryo can potentially be patented, a key EU legal chief said Thursday.

In an opinion of huge interest for biotechnology companies investing in stem-cell research, Advocate General Pedro Cruz Villalon said such eggs did not meet the definition of what constituted a human embryo.

Federal authorities on Thursday charged FedEx with assisting illegal pharmacies by knowingly delivering painkillers and dangerous drugs to customers without prescriptions.

The indictment filed in federal court in San Francisco alleges that FedEx Corp. conspired with two related online pharmacies for 10 years ending in 2010.

HIV-positive people in the world's rich countries now live nearly as long as those who don't carry the AIDS-causing virus, as drugs have cut the overall death rate in half, researchers said Friday.

Anti-retroviral treatment (ART) has cut the death rate from about 18 per 1,000 people between 1999 and 2001 to nine per 1,000 per year in 2009-2011, according to data from 200 clinics in Europe, the United States and Australia.

Exoskeletons helping the paralyzed to walk, tiny maggot-inspired devices gnawing at brain tumors, machines working tirelessly as hospital helpers: in many respects, the future of medicine is already here.

Experts say that, at the experimental level, human skills are already being enhanced or replaced by robots and other hi-tech substitutes -- and these may become commonplace just a few years from now.

The number of new HIV cases in Australia remains at the highest level in 20 years, according to data Thursday which reveals many people are not being detected early enough.

The Annual HIV Surveillance report from the University of New South Wales' Kirby Institute found 1,235 new cases of the virus were diagnosed in 2013. There were 1,253 new infections in 2012.

No batteries required: Scientists are creating a biological pacemaker by injecting a gene into the hearts of sick pigs that changed ordinary cardiac cells into a special kind that induces a steady heartbeat.

The study, published Wednesday, is one step toward developing an alternative to electronic pacemakers that are implanted into 300,000 Americans a year.

A major international study out Wednesday found that niacin does not reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke in people with high cholesterol, but it does boost the risk of death.

Therefore, most people should not take the widely used supplement, also known as vitamin B3, according to an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine that was published along with the results of the randomized trial.

For more than three decades, AIDS and those fighting it have been locked in a tango whose steps have gone sideways, backwards or forwards with the lives of millions at stake.

The 20th International AIDS Conference, opening in Melbourne, Australia, on Sunday will have plenty of opportunity to mull the strange dance with this complex, deadly disease.